


Reality/Reality

by ikeracity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon, Coping, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Post-Beach, why do i write these things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:07:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/pseuds/ikeracity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-divorce. </p>
<p>The thing about lucid dreaming is that it gives you all the realities that could never exist anywhere else. Charles knows this better than anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reality/Reality

Charles is excellent at lucid dreaming. It’s a byproduct of his telepathy, he always figured, and only now, well into adulthood, is he learning to truly appreciate it. 

When he was just a child, he used to direct his dreams toward flying, or building airplanes, or engaging in pirate adventures. Now, he falls into dreams of chess and warmth and Erik. 

It is frighteningly easy. He closes his eyes in one reality and wakes up in another—it is as simple as that.

Tonight, when he sits up in bed, Erik is across the room, sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, a glass of brandy in his hand, the drink and Erik’s eyes glowing in the firelight. At his movement, Erik turns his head and looks at him with a smile. 

“I thought you’d sleep all night,” he says, his voice slightly teasing. “I was waiting for you to wake up.” 

“I’m awake now,” Charles tells him, and swings his legs out from underneath the blankets and stands. 

“Yes,” Erik muses, his eyes on Charles’s form. “Come here.” 

Charles goes willingly, coming to stand by Erik’s chair. Erik looks at him with such warmth that Charles can’t help but reach out a hand, yearning to touch him. Erik takes his outstretched hand without hesitation, caressing Charles’s fingers between his own, the casual affection in his expression breathtaking and devastating. 

“You know,” Erik says conversationally, “tomorrow, we’ll have to figure out what we’re doing with the school.” 

“The school,” Charles repeats dumbly, focused singularly on Erik’s touch. 

“Yes, the school. Are we going to extend the west wing or the east one? And who gets to remodel the kitchen? I’m not painting again, I did that last time.” 

“No, of course not,” Charles murmurs. 

Some part of his rational mind knows that Erik shouldn’t know about how Alex had destroyed half the kitchen the day before in a training exercise gone badly wrong—some part of him knows Erik shouldn’t be here at all—but hey, this is a lucid dream, and Erik is only a figment of Charles’s subconscious mind anyway. Erik can know what he wants, be where he wants. It’s all a dream. 

And since it’s a dream, Charles sits down across from Erik and spins up a chessboard out of thin air and plays his pawn forward. 

They play two matches in silence, the crackle of the fire the only sound between them. Charles wins, because this is his dream after all, and Erik frowns, more frustrated than angry. 

“You were never this good before,” he comments. 

“I’m playing myself,” Charles tells him archly. “Of course I’ll win.” 

Erik’s expression creases in confusion. “What?”

“Nothing. Come on.” 

Charles stands, holding out his hand, and again, Erik takes it without hesitation. With a wave of his hand, Charles tears away the bedroom and builds a meadow. On the ground is a picnic blanket with a basket overflowing with food, and Charles draws Erik down into the grass, their faces painted warm with sunlight. 

“Open?” Charles asks, holding up the wine bottle, and Erik works the corkscrew with an ease that makes Charles smile. He pours them each a glass and then waits for Erik to take his before clinking their drinks together. “To summer days.” 

“To you,” Erik replies, and kisses him. 

Charles lets him press. He closes his eyes and wonders if this is how it really felt, if Erik’s lips had ever really been this soft, or if Erik had ever been this gentle. Time has dulled his memories, and he can’t remember if Erik tilted his head right or left, or if he’d kissed quite this hungrily. But the taste—the taste is always the same, in faded memories or in dreams. Erik tastes like wine and ash and wood, and his fingers cupped behind Charles’s head are firm and warm, security and gentle affection spun in one. 

Eventually, Charles pulls away, wiping Erik’s taste from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Come on,” he says, trying for a light tone. “If you do that, we’ll never finish this food.” 

“Why eat at all?” Erik asks, dipping his head to search for another kiss, and Charles thinks in exasperation, _You’re a stubborn bastard even in my dreams._

But he lets Erik do as he pleases, because he has always let Erik do what he wants, because he has always loved him enough to give him that. So when Erik presses him down into the soft grass and makes love to him, slow and deep, he lets him. He urges Erik on with soft gasps and muffled groans, and when they come together, he has no regrets, only lazy, sated love that pulses warm and strong inside him. 

“I love you,” Erik pants, lying back on the blanket, watching the clouds puff on by. He has Charles’s hand in his, and he raises both hands to his mouth, barely brushing the back of Charles’s knuckles with his lips. 

Charles closes his eyes, memorizing the sensation, and lets himself believe it, just for that moment. “Enough?” he whispers, his voice slightly hoarse. “Enough to let go of everything else?”

“Of course,” Erik answers instantly, not even a breath of silence between Charles’s question and his reply. “Everything.” 

“Your helmet?”

“What helmet?”

“And your quest for mutant superiority?”

“Peace,” Erik says, propping himself up on one elbow. “That’s all I want. We want the same things, you and I.” 

“Yes,” Charles sighs. For this one time, he can agree to that. 

They linger in the meadow for an impossibly long time. Toward the end, when the sun is beginning to dip at the horizon, Erik makes love to him again, almost painfully tender. He presses soft kisses into Charles’s shoulders and neck, leaving no marks, only ghost sensations. Charles wraps his legs around Erik’s hips, driving them both on, each movement slower and deeper, until they’re barely moving, only pressed so tightly together that when they both come, it is like one person, like one mind and body and soul, fusing together forever on a wave of split grass and pale moonlight. 

Afterwards, Charles can’t help but ask, “Will you still love me when I wake up?”

Erik looks at him, puzzled. “You _are_ awake.” 

“Will you?”

“Charles—”

“Tell me.” 

“Yes, of course I will, _liebling,_ ” Erik sighs, adding something that sounds like, “Stubborn idiot,” in a breathless mutter. 

Charles smiles. “Good.” He’ll let himself believe this for now. It’s all he can take. 

Erik bends over to kiss him again, and when they part this time, Charles opens his eyes to the darkness of his bedroom. Erik’s warmth is gone, and when he tries to sit up, he falls back into his pillows because his legs are a dead weight, as useful as two lumps of lead attached to his hips. He lies back and clenches the blankets in his fists, fighting to breathe. 

Lucid dreaming is easy. Coming out of a lucid dream back to reality is one of the hardest things he has ever endured. He knows he should stop, he knows he is only hurting himself with these fantasies that will never find daylight, but he can never resist it. 

He turns his head to look at the clock. Four in the morning. Still a handful of hours to go. He fights with regret and desire, and as always, the desire wins. 

After only a second of hesitation, he shuts his eyes and falls away. 

When he opens them again, Erik is sitting across the room with a glass of whiskey in his hand and a book open on his lap. 

“Hello, _schatz,_ ” he says when he hears Charles sit up. “I thought you’d sleep forever. Come here.” 

And Charles stands and goes to him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Reality/Reality (Song to the Siren Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/818272) by [unveiled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unveiled/pseuds/unveiled)




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